Chicago out as Obama’s Olympic pitch fails

The International Olympic Committee eliminated Chicago in the first round of voting, despite the plea from Obama, who decided late in the competition to become the first president to lobby the IOC in person.

“I think to be eliminated in the first round is very embarrassing, to put it mildly,’’ said Stephen Hess, a presidential historian at George Washington University.

Obama was watching TV alone aboard Air Force One, headed back to Washington from Copenhagen, when he found out Chicago’s fate, and later that Rio de Janeiro had become the first South American city to be awarded the Olympics.

After returning to the White House yesterday afternoon, he congratulated Rio and Brazil, and expressed no regrets about the effort he made.

“One of the things that I think is most valuable about sports is that you can play a great game and still not win,’’ Obama said. “And so although I wish that we had come back with better news from Copenhagen, I could not be prouder of my hometown of Chicago.’’

“I have no doubt that it was the strongest bid possible, and I’m proud that I was able to come in and help make that case in person,’’ he added. “I believe it’s always a worthwhile endeavor to promote and boost the United States of America and invite the world to come see what we’re all about.’’

Still, the high-profile failure could feed negative narratives already nipping at his heels - that he’s a better talker than closer, more celebrity than statesman.

“This is really the first major caucus loss for the Obama team,’’ said Ken Duberstein, a chief of staff for Ronald Reagan who also served on the ethics board of the US Olympic Committee.

“There are limits to celebrity sometimes,’’ he said, calling the IOC a collection of “impervious high muckety-muckety-mucks.’’

Duberstein said he doubted there would be “any lasting repercussion’’ to the president’s domestic agenda “unless people overreact.’’

White House senior adviser David Axelrod also discounted any impact on the president’s domestic agenda, including health care reform. “All he really lost was some sleep and he was more than happy to do that,’’ Axelrod said.

While Obama was out of the country, the Labor Department reported that the unemployment rate climbed to 9.8 percent last month, the highest level since 1983. Some Republicans, who had questioned the political wisdom of the president’s decision to make the case for Chicago in person, pounced on the dour jobs report.

“As President Obama travels to Copenhagen to bring the Summer Olympics to his hometown seven years from now, Americans back home are increasingly concerned they won’t have a job seven months from now as they see more and more of their neighbors and friends lose jobs today,’’ GOP chairman Michael Steele said in a statement.

Obama also addressed the jobless numbers upon his return to Washington, calling it “a sobering reminder that progress comes in fits and starts - and that we’re going to need to grind out this recovery step by step.’’

In Copenhagen, Obama’s mood had been much more hopeful.

Chicago had seemed to pick up momentum in the last few days, with many IOC members seemingly charmed by Michelle Obama, who led the US delegation before her husband arrived. Yesterday, even the president conceded she stole the show from him with her highly personal speech to the IOC.

She gave a passionate account of what the games would mean to her late father, who taught her as a girl how to throw punches better than the boys. And she noted that he had multiple sclerosis, so she knows something about athletes who compete against tough odds.

“Chicago’s vision for the Olympic and Paralympic movement is about so much more than what we can offer the games,’’ she said. “It’s about what the games can offer all of us - it’s about inspiring this generation and building a lasting legacy for the next.’’

The president followed his wife by saying that a nation shaped by the people of the world “wants a chance to inspire it once more.’’

In making his pitch, the nation’s first black president described Chicago as a city of diversity and warmth, a place where he finally found a home.

“We’re a nation that has always opened its arms to the citizens of the world - including my own father from the African continent - people who have sought something better; who have dreamed of something bigger,’’ Obama told IOC members. “That’s not just the American Dream. That is the Olympic spirit. It’s the essence of the Olympic spirit. That’s why we see so much of ourselves in these Games. That’s why we want them in Chicago. That’s why we want them in America.’’

Material from the Associated Press was also used in this report.